1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an apparatus for manipulating a position of an endoscope used for extending a viewing angle within a human body during minimally invasive surgery and natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery, and more particularly, to an endoscope manipulator capable of moving an endoscope in vertical, lateral and longitudinal directions in a compact and lightweight structure.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In general, conventional open surgery for patient treatments causes delay of post-surgical recovery for the patients due to a large incision area and thus a heavy loss of blood, and large scars remaining after the surgery have a negative impact on the patients' lives after the surgery. In order to overcome the above disadvantages of the conventional open surgery, in recent times, novel surgical techniques such as minimally invasive surgery (MIS), natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES), etc., have been developed.
MIS is a surgical technique of incising and operating on a minimal area of a patient's body using a thin and long surgical instrument specifically configured to minimize an incision area for surgery. NOTES is a surgical technique of inserting a surgical instrument through a natural orifice (for example, the esophagus, the anus, the vagina, etc.) of a human body and conveying the surgical instrument to the operation area in the body to operate on the area without incising the patient's body in order to move the surgical instrument to the operation area in the body. Since MIS and NOTES require only a small incision area for operation and a loss of blood is remarkably less than that of the open surgery, a post-surgical recovery time for the patient is shortened and scarring is minimal. Therefore, in recent times, the number of MIS and NOTES operations has remarkably increased.
When MIS and NOTES are performed, a specifically devised endoscope is used in order to obtain a visual field of an operation area through a minimal incision. That is, the endoscope is a medical imaging device for MIS, in which a visual field of the interior of the patient's body cannot be directly obtained. Surgeons and nurses using MIS perform operations while viewing images of the surgical area obtained through the endoscope.
While performing MIS and NOTES, in order to maximally and accurately show a state of the operation area and movement of the surgical instrument in the patient's body, which are prone to change frequently, positions and visual fields of the endoscope must be continuously varied. In order to manipulate movement of the endoscope throughout the entire operation, movement of the endoscope is currently handled by an assistant surgical operator other than the surgeon, joining the operating team. However, when the exclusive operator who manipulates the endoscope separately joins the operating team, skilled medical operators are unnecessarily used and thus surgical operations are performed less frequently.
In order to solve these problems, in recent times, several endoscope manipulators have been developed to manipulate the endoscope without an exclusive operator. Most of the recently developed endoscope manipulators employ a method of manipulating movement of the endoscope using a robotic technique of a multi-axially controlled robot arm. When the endoscope is manipulated using the robot arm, the position and angle of the endoscope can be accurately adjusted through forward-reverse mechanical analysis of the robot arm. However, since all joints are controlled using motors, loads applied to the joints are increased toward the base joint, thus increasing the total size and weight. In addition, depending on necessity, when the joint of the robot arm is largely moved to adjust a posture of the endoscope, the large movement may disturb or restrict activities of medical staff.